New Franklin Register

After having read in the spring issue of this newspaper about the 2014 audit of the Town of Franklin financial operations by the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC), you might have wondered how it could be the first time that you learned of this critique. Arguably, this is because the town board did what it could to keep this report from the citizens — legally and then some.

Town of Franklin Financial Operations

Now Report 2014M-32 can be inspected at the town hall during office hours. (It had been lost in the files.) The OSC is more accommodating. Anytime, this audit can be read at your leisure, printed, or downloaded for free at: https://goo.gl/nYBygL.

This audit of the fiscal year 2012 was extended into 2013 and then published in 2014. After reviewing a draft of this report, the town board responded with a letter to the OSC in April of 2014. After the report was published, the town board placed a copy in the town files and placed the required notice in the back of The Walton Reporter in May. After reviewing the final report, the town board submitted the required Corrective Action Plan (CAP) to the OSC in July. In all this time, there is no written record of this audit being discussed in the public meetings of the town board. Unfortunately, video-recording of the monthly meetings did not begin until later in December 2014.

This is extraordinary. Though there is no law requiring that the town board inform the townspeople of an audit, this is the accepted common practice. Last year, the proposed bio-digester project for the Village of Walton was audited by the OSC. The resulting report was discussed at the April 2017 meeting of the mayor and trustees, and their discussion was covered in the next issue of The Reporter. In contrast, the Franklin Town Board kept its own council. In the last year, audits of local governments were done for towns of Colechester (financial condition), Walton (incompatible duties), Hancock (transfer station operations), and Sidney (budget review). In 2015, Delaware County was audited both for third-party contractual services and for vehicle usage and disposal. These boards kept their residents informed through monthly public meetings.

The NY Open Meeting Law does require that the business of the town board be conducted in front of the townspeople, with a few exceptions. From the Public Officers Law, Article 7, §100, Legislative Declaration: It is essential to the maintenance of a democratic society that the public business be performed in an open and public manner and that the citizens of this state be fully aware of and able to observe the performance of public officials and attend and listen to the deliberations and decisions that go into the making of public policy. The people must be able to remain informed if they are to retain control over those who are their public servants. It is the only climate under which the commonweal will prosper and enable the governmental process to operate for the benefit of those who created it.

The New York Department of State advises on compliance with the Open Meetings Law through its Committee on Open Government. In response to an inquiry by this newspaper, the committee rendered an advisory opinion of April 21, 2017 (OML-AO-5544) that the submission of an official CAP to the Office of the State Comptroller requires a motion by the town board. The minutes of the Franklin Town Board record no such motion. Our board, in continuing to avoid discussing the audit in front of the townspeople, violated this law.

Under the OML, town boards may go into executive session to discuss some confidential matters. Topics that may be discussed in private are limited under the law and must be declared beforehand. Franklin Town Board went into executive session in April, May, and June (but not in July) of 2014 to discuss contract negotiation. No mention was made of discussing the audit. (This is just, as well as an audit is not a legal topic for an executive session according to COG.) What is more, any motions made in executive session must be recorded in the minutes.

Supervisor Taggart and councilmen Grant and Sitts were in office when OSC issued its audit. Councilmen Bruno and Smith (Donald T.) were elected in November 2015.

Our board did not use the opportunity of their past two years of dissembling to correct the lapses by the supervisor submitting the overdue financial reports (now totaling eight) and by the councilmen preforming annual audits. Instead, in the absence of pressure from the townspeople, our board continued business as usual.

This secrecy is part of a long-standing pattern of governance by the Franklin Town Board. Before their monthly meetings, the lack of an agenda leaves we-the-people uninformed on what will be discussed. During meetings, the lack of periodic reports by appointed officials (assessor, code enforcement officer, etc.) leaves we-the-people uninformed of what their government has been doing. After meeting, the lack of postings to a website leaves we-the-people uninformed of what just happened. We have a board that that informs its townspeople as little as is legally possible.

More disturbingly, it raises the question: What else do we not know about decisions that our town board makes illegally outside of public meetings?

Correction: In the spring issue, we misstated that Mr. Taggart was appointed supervisor before being elected in November of 2013. Therefore, Supervisor Smith (Donald M.) is responsible for fail-ing to file annual financial reports for the years 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. Supervisor Taggart is responsible for the years 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. We regret the error.

We are what we experience throughout our lives. Reading has inspired me to do the things I have done and to live a lifestyle outside of mainstream society.

Photo by Robert Lamb

Much of my early inspiration came from the National Geographic magazine. Unlike many young boys, I devoured stories about the wilderness for the content, not the nude natives. One article described life in Siberia and featured a rugged fifty year-old living a sustenance lifestyle. Another described the end of gold mining in Alaska due to low prices and the Second World War. There were articles about the caribou herds and huge salmon runs, and bears, lots of bears. Black bears and giant brown bears inhabit Alaska’s great lands. Monstrous man-killing polar bears stalk villages in the north.

Film also influenced my life decisions. In the sixties, theaters would show fillers between the main features. These short film clips of Alaska and its people had a profound effect on my young psyche. I began to view society as something to take in small doses. I once read a time study of modern man’s lifestyle. A man with a family of three would work ten years to provide food for them. Twenty years to provide a home, etc., etc. I vowed to break out of that mold. I decided early on to become a homesteader. Like the early settlers, I would take a barren piece of land and build a home and life for my family.

After graduating high school in 1975 with a young bride and first child, I was devastated to learn Alaska no longer offered land for homesteading. The program had ended a year earlier. After the birth of my second child, their mother left. With custody of two children, the prospect of ever seeing the land I dreamed so much about seemed remote.

As fate would have it, I met a beautiful young woman who shared my vision of a simple lifestyle. We purchased fifteen wooded acres on the edge of the Catskill Mountains. We started out in an old office trailer and with my two children and our six-month-old son, we began our lives as urban homesteaders. We put in gardens and raised animals. We had cows and pigs, chickens and turkeys. We hunted and fished. Meanwhile, we had to keep jobs. Unlike homesteading in Alaska, here in New York we have to pay taxes for the privilege of owning land. We needed autos to get to work, and of course we needed insurance on the cars and property. So many demands on a man’s time can leave little time to enjoy it all. I have no regrets about my choices. I am proud to have never used fossil fuels to heat my home. I still cut my own firewood.

The cabin near Denali, photo by Robert Lamb

As the years went by and the kids moved out on their own, I was suddenly floored with the desire to follow some of my earlier dreams. I applied for a job in Denali, Alaska, and that is how Alaska became my mistress. While working there allowed me to see Alaska, it was not enough; I had to experience Alaska. I wanted to feel it, smell it and revel in its wildness. I wanted a piece of it for my own. I purchased five acres near Indian River from the state, and my best friend Jared helped me build a cabin with views of Denali, the tallest mountain on the North American continent. I felt I had finally come home. Home to something I had only ever read about. The land was fifty miles from the nearest phone, yet still I felt the need to get further away from civilization.

So my friend Jared and I bought another piece of wilderness heaven.

President Roosevelt set aside five thousand square miles of wilderness around Prince William Sound called the Chugach National Forest. It sits among several state parks. Wilderness as God created it, with no humans for sixty miles around. It is here, surrounded by towering glacier-topped mountains and a bay full of life, that my soul feels at home. With eagles soaring overhead and bears inhabiting my dreams, I am home. The breaching Minke whales and chattering rafts of otters make the bay a natural entertainment. There are five kind of salmon, as well as halibut and rockfish. Moose and Sitka deer share the forest and tundra with the black and brown bears.

What more could a wandering spirit ask for?

Many things, I might reply.

I have yet to swim in the Arctic Ocean or raft the mighty Yukon River.

Documenting Delaware and Otsego County Farmers, Thirty Years Later

In 2015, The Farmers’ Museum acquired all of the negatives and photographs by Charles Winters taken for his book with Jean Simonelli, TOO WET TO PLOW. The book documents the story of farmers’ lives through a compilation of stories and Charlie’s memorable photo-documentation. Intimate portraits of men and women who worked together to keep a farm running, and children who helped on the farm, were shown in black and white and vivid color. For some children, the farm was a playground of sorts, for others it was a means to learn about animals, the earth and growing food, or hard work. They saw their parents put in time, twenty-four/seven. A life of work; a life without long vacations and with little break.

The New Franklin Register has been chronicling the sale of real property in Franklin for almost a decade, totaling over 350 sales. We have compiled all these by year and posted them on the Franklin Local website. This database allows us to look back at the recent history of real estate in our town.

In a typical year, there are forty or so free-market sales – averaging less than one a week. Of the 2,180 parcels in Franklin, that is a two percent turnover annually. Also, there are as many transfers and adjustments, for which no money changes hands. Generally, we do not publish those, to save space. In addition, every month there are a few sales between relatives or of foreclosed parcels, which usually do not yield a free-market price. While we publish those, they are not included in this analysis. Continue reading…

New York State Real Property Tax Law [RPTL] Section 487, adopted in 1977, provides a 15-year real property taxation exemption for solar, wind, and farm waste energy systems. These energy generating systems are considered to be capital improvements to the real property, and received this exemption from taxation to encourage their construction. The Franklin Town Board has passed Local Law 2-2016, opting out of Section 487. This allows all residential, municipal, and commercial systems to be added to the real property tax base.

This idea to remove the NYS tax exemption was first proposed to the Delaware County Board of Supervisors. Every municipal entity (county, town, village) and all school districts will have to make a decision to continue the NYS exemption, or choose to “opt out.” For forty years, NYS has been offering incentives for residences, small businesses, schools, and municipalities to install solar and wind systems to reduce their energy bills, and often as a personal action to reduce greenhouse gas creation from burning fossil fuels. Continue reading…

Entering Franklin Durable Goods, the antiques shop on Main Street, is a bit like walking into a sea of enticing objects, as waves of alluring – if sometimes odd – items wash over you, drawing you deeper into this unique emporium.

Here a metal statue of a tiger, there glass bottles from some long-ago pharmacy. Here a spear for snaring eels, there steel hooks to lift ton-bags of grain. All this and more, artfully displayed on a pool table or a staircase or even (upstairs) on a coffin, to catch your attention and make you want to touch, pick up or marvel.

The proprietor of this adventure in collecting is Neil Rochmis, who runs the business with Franklin’s village mayor, Tom Briggs. And it is Rochmis who can usually be found sitting behind a counter, Friday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m., playing scrabble on his laptop, talking to his dog, Sidney, or explaining the provenance of an unusual item to a potential customer. Continue reading…

People around town may notice that the Franklin Free Library has removed a large old maple tree on the west lawn. By the time you read this, the second old maple may be gone as well.

This is the exciting beginning of a major upgrade to the Library. Plans are being implemented to create a cellar entryway into the Library, with a wide level walkway from the village sidewalk. Patrons will be able to use wheelchairs, scooters or walkers to get easily to the new entryway. Once inside, a personal wheelchair elevator will provide access to the Main Floor, for programs and the book collections. A new Reading Room is being planned in an area inside the new entryway. The current bathroom will be enlarged and new fixtures will make it accessible for people in wheelchairs. The emergency exit at the rear of the Library will be enlarged and ramped for accessible, safer exiting.

Library Board members applied for and have been awarded a generous grant from The O’Connor Foundation to begin the rehabilitation of the bathroom and rear exit. The Library has also applied for a substantial grant from the New York State Library Construction Grant Program. Although results of our application won’t be known until next June, it has passed several hurdles and hopefully will be successful. Continue reading…

Inserted into each copy of issue #30 of The New Franklin Register is a single-page survey to measure our readers’ feelings about and participation in the local economy.

The Greater Franklin Chamber of Commerce, whose primary mission is to enhance and support local business in and around the Town of Franklin, needs your help to determine what is important to Franklin’s residents and visitors, as well as what might be needed in our community in terms of business and services.

Please take a few moments to respond to the survey. Those returned by December 15th will be entered in a raffle. Two numbers will be drawn, each to win a $25 gift certificate to Wise Guys Pizza of Franklin. (Please note: A name and phone number must be included on your returned survey to be eligible to win.)

Survey results will be presented in the Spring 2017 issue of The New Franklin Register.

Please respond! Your participation and feedback is important to Franklin’s economic future!